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Anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers and the sovereign citizen movement
By CHRISTINE M. SARTESCHI
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
AUG 14, 2021 AT 5:00 AM
There is an ever-increasing overlap between the anti-maskers/anti-vaxxers and sovereign citizen movements, not just in the United States, but in Canada, Australia and beyond.
The former believe that COVID-19 poses minimal risk and that the government is overreacting by requiring individuals to protect themselves and others. Despite evidence to the contrary, they consider masks both ineffective and harmful and see vaccines as dangerous. COVID-19 mandates are seen as imposing upon their personal liberties.
Sovereign citizens are anti-government extremists who believe they are immune from all laws. Both groups are conspiracy-oriented and see the government as encroaching upon their personal freedoms.
Two recent examples highlight the fusion between movements. The first involves nearly 200 San Francisco employees, many firefighters, who submitted identical letters to the Human Resources department suggesting that by mandating vaccines, the city was infringing upon their “God-given and constitutionally secured rights.” Sovereign citizens often assert that no man-made law can limit God-given rights.
The second is the case of Peter Alan Hearn, a known anti-mask protester from Boise, Idaho. He was arrested after refusing to wear a required facemask at Cosco last year. He is now suing local law enforcement for $4.5 million in damages, claiming he was kidnapped, falsely imprisoned and assaulted. Sovereign citizens consider any arrests by police officers to be kidnapping and merely being touched by a police officer, they consider to be assault.
The lawsuit is replete with sovereign citizen references, including the use of Black’s Law Dictionary, which is no more than a dictionary of legal terms, and has no legal standing in any American courtroom.
He also notes that “Idaho Statue (code), or any other statute, code, mandate, order, emergency order or rule has no subject matter jurisdiction over man’s rights at the common law.” Sovereign citizens believe that they are not subject to the American legal system, its codes, laws, rules, etc., because they only recognize the laws of God.
A few months ago, a Minnesota sovereign citizen filmed himself stealing COVID-19 vaccinations from multiple drug stores. He was doing the right thing, he told the authorities, because “this is what they’re poisoning people with.”
Lenka Koloma, founder of the “Freedom to Breathe Agency” (FTBA), an anti-mask agency, went viral when a TikTok video surfaced of her informing a store worker in California that she could be sued for requiring customers to wear face coverings. Koloma is also the creator of phony identity cards featuring the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) seal and claiming that the people holding them are exempt from wearing masks. This prompted the DOJ to warn the public about the fake claims.
In a recent post on Instagram, Koloma writes that she and a small group of others are on the verge of “becoming sovereign Americans…who are not subjected to unlawful permits, licenses, codes or income taxes. There is nothing better than having diplomatic immunity.”
Beyond the United States, a woman in Australia refused to comply with COVID-19 safety regulations because as a sovereign citizen, she is not bound by the laws of the country. She told the court “I’m not a person; you can’t charge me as a person.” She was subsequently charged with multiple crimes, including trespassing.
A British ex-pat in Singapore refused to wear a mask on a tube train and was arrested by the authorities. He was later seen in a viral video declaring himself a sovereign citizen and that he “will never wear a mask.” He has since been remanded to a psychiatric facility until his trial.
Another woman in Singapore was filmed shouting and assaulting a member of the public while not wearing a mask. In the video, she claims to be “sovereign” which she explained “means I have nothing to do with the police, it means I have no contract with the police. They have no say over me.” She later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two weeks in jail and a $2,000 fine.
These cases suggest that anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers are borrowing the reasoning and rhetoric of the sovereign citizen movement. Like sovereign citizens, they are attempting to justify their beliefs with pseudo-legal tactics to skirt the law. In other words, they believe that they are above the law.
Sarteschi is associate professor of social work and criminology at Chatham University.
